For ripping a CD to .wav or .ogg format, insert a CD into your CD-ROM and click on the ¨home¨ icon on your KDE desktop.
In the side bar, click on the icon that says ¨services¨, you will see the ¨Audio CD Browser¨ appear, then select ¨by name¨ or ¨by track¨ for .wav or ¨Ogg Vobis¨ for .ogg format. Copy and paste the files to your /home/bruno/music directory and the job is done.
( .wav can be easily converted to mp3 if you really would want that with the ¨wav2mp3¨ or ¨Lame¨ program. If Lame is installed Konqueror will show the option MP3 too )

Enjoy the music.

Bruno

* The Lame converter is also called ¨notlame¨ these days. Don´t ask me why but there sure is a reason for it. ( in the desciption it says; ¨this is not Lame¨ but it is the same software )

These are some of those critical programs for your computer. Without these, your computer will not know where to find any of the partitions or drives on the computer. Goof this up and you can be dead in the water. Never make any changes without a good backup copy.

/etc/fstab

In this file there is a description of the various file systems. Commands like ¨fsck¨ and ¨mount¨ consult this file for the actions they take.
This looks like a complicated description of the files on your computer, but it is really simple if you break it down into the parts of each entry. Take a look below.
( OR :In order for certain programs to be able to determine where certain partitions are supposed to be mounted by default, the /etc/fstab file is used )

The devpts file system provides an interface to pseudo-terminal (pty) devices. It is typically mounted at /dev/pts.

The /proc filesystem is to provide an easy way to view kernel and information about currently running processes.

If you build Linux from scratch, you will have to write your own /etc/fstab file.

/etc/mtab

This file handles the mounted devices and is automatically updated by the mount command.
And it looks a bit similar to fstab but not the 100% same ( notice rw and ro for read/write and read only ) And it does only lists the mounted devices !

In some distro's the additional partitions ( Windows or second Linux distro ) are not automatically mounted and thus not visible.

From the story yesterday we know about fstab and mtab:

$ cat /etc/fstab

( shows you the available partitions )

$ cat /etc/mtab

( shows you the mounted partitions )

If you see partitions in fstab and the same partitions are not in mtab you will have to mount them yourself:

$ su
< password >
# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

( as root, if your win. partition is on hda1 )

This will mount hda1, usually your Windows partition.

# cd /mnt/hda1

( to get in that directory )

# ls

( to see what is in that directory ) ( ls stands for "list" )

# umount /mnt/hda1

( will un-mount the partition, NOTE: not unmount but umount )

In some cases the mount command will print an error message to the screen. ( Mainly in Slackware and Linux From Scratch ) Have a look then if there are any directories in the /mnt directory to mount on:

$ su
< password >
# cd /mnt
# ls

If there is no ( empty ) directory for hda1 ( or other partitions ) you will have to make it first:

# mkdir hda1

Only then you can:

# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

So see first what partitions you would like to mount and make the directories for it in /mnt. Only after that you can do the actual mounting. ( the directories will stay after a reboot, the mounting however has to be done again )Do not mount partitions if you do not need them mounted. ( since every twenty times a partition is mounted there will be a fsck at boot, and that makes the time to boot longer)

NOTE FROM THE "EDITOR"As you were all celebrating the 4th of July, I had some time to make a brand new INDEX page for the Tips . . . . . . . . . with clickable links directly to each of the 90 tips to date. I know you will appreciate this because finding a special Tip had become a major headache. Bruno

My dear friends, sure I'd like to present the change of the index page as service to you all , but to be completely honest, I could not find my way either in the previous index, so I had no choice, I had to make the titles to links . . . :DB) Bruno

I always want to keep an eye on the volume of the log files. Very large log files often mean something is wrong with your computer. Then depending on what log file it is you can see, determines in what direction you should be looking.

Here is how I do that:

$ su
< password >
# du -s /var/log/* | less

Will page through less ( scroll with spacebar, close with ¨q¨ ) the logfiles and how many K they are. Also you can see if there are many .gz (zipped) files. We will get rid of those later. First have a look. Do also:

# du -s /var/log/*/* | less

And see if there are any strange large ones, and if there are many zipped ones. No zipped log files means a failing ¨logrotate¨ ( see below for info about anacron )
We will clean out the zipped log messages, because we do not need those anymore: ( be carefull typing, you are root !!! )

# rm /var/log/*.gz

It will ask you for confirmation each time, just check if it really is a .gz file and type ¨yes¨ and hit enter.

Now we do the same with:

# rm /var/log/*.old

Now we do the same with:

# rm /var/log/*/*.gz

That should have removed quite a few files from your HD !!

If you have no .gz log files and they are many MB´s, that means logrotate does not do its job! Logrotate is a cron-job, a maintenance job that is performed every night between 3:00 and 4:00 AM. If your computer is not on 24/7 you should install anacron to do the maintenance at boot.

If you can´t find anacron on your Cds, get anacron: Here and take the top one ( for made in Linux . . anacron-2.3-9mlx.i386.rpm ) download it and just install it by double clicking.

!! Anacron makes that your computer shows heavy activity 3 - 5 minutes after you boot up in the morning (afternoon). The activity is for about 5 minutes, so nothing to be worried about - no hacker´s activity - all normal maintenance jobs !!

One last tip: anacron needs no configuring, it should be pre-configured and run automatically . .

As you type a command in a console you do not have to know the full PATH to that command or program, just the name will do. Type ¨kmail¨ and it will bring up the Kmail program, type ¨cp fileX /mnt/win_c¨ and it will call on the ¨cp¨ executable to copy ¨fileX to the Windows C: partition. No need to type the full path to those executables.

This is because the Kmail and the cp executables are ¨in your PATH¨ ( the full paths are /usr/bin/kmail and /bin/cp )
Most of these executables for normal users are stored in /bin, /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin, thus these directories are ¨in your PATH¨

Sometimes however programs are stored in unusual places, or you make your own scripts and programs and store them in a special directory. Then we can add those directories to ¨your PATH¨, so that a simple short command can call them.

First let´s have a look what´s in your path:

$ echo $PATH

You will see something like:
/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/games:/usr/lib/jre-1.4.1_01/bin

What this means is /usr/X11R6/bin and /usr/local/bin/ and /bin etc. are in your PATH
For root:

$ su
< password >
# echo $PATH

Will give this line:
/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin

You notice that the PATHs are different for root than for the normal user ! ( ¨sbin¨ is a good give-away that they are for root )

Now let´s assume you want to add the /home/bruno/progs/exec directory ( where you store your own executables ) to your PATH:

# export PATH=$PATH:/home/bruno/progs/exec

Now you can just type ¨back¨ at the prompt to call on your self-written backup-script or program that you have in /home/bruno/progs/exec.

To permanently add something to the PATH you will have to edit a file, could be in a few different ones ( depending on shell and distro): ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile or /etc/profile or /etc/csh.login. ( More in-depth and accurate info can be found Here )

There is a line like:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

Just add a colon and the new directory, like this:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/home/bruno/progs/exec

And save the file. To load the new settings either reboot or:

# source /etc/skel/.bash_profile

Now you know next time you see the error message that something is not ¨in your PATH¨ how to solve this little problem.

Bruno, Is there a way to download all of these tips and save them to our hard drives or burn them cd's for future reference? There are times when the internet is unavalible and some people may not want to print in excess of 80 pages of tips. I do know how but some people may not.Thanks,mike180

At the ultra left bottom of the page there is a link that says:Download / Print this Topic

if you click on that one you get 3 choices:Printer Friendly Version
This will display the topic in a simple, printer friendly format on this page, no download is required.

Download HTML Version
This will enable you to download a HTML version of this topic to your hard drive. This will open your browser's download dialogue box

Download Microsoft Word Version
This will enable you to download a version of this topic in an editable Word format. This will open your browser's download dialogue box* the MS word version can be displayed in the OpenOfiice program you have on your Linux box ( even Koffice can do the trick )

Well that did not tell us very much did it ? So lets do some serious testing.
What you need is a program called ¨memtester¨ ( for downloads see links below )

Quote

(Info @ Homepage)
Description: Memtest is a utility for testing the memory subsystem in a computer to determine if it is faulty. The original source was by Simon Kirby <sim@stormix.com>. I have by this time completely rewritten the original source, and added many additional tests to help catch borderline memory. I also rewrote the original tests (which catch mainly memory bits which are stuck permanently high or low) so that they run approximately an order of magnitude faster.

Here is how it works, ( I have 512MB memory )

$ su
<password>
# memtest 512M 1 -l >

( 512M ¨one¨ ,¨-L¨ ) ( The 1 is for running the test only once, the -l makes a logfile in your /home )

There are a few different ways to search for packages in the Mandrake Control Center. The search field can be used with wildcards ( * ), in names, descriptions and files. Any individual file in a particular package can be found this way. Also any terminology given in the information-panel can be found with the description search.

If you have a general idea of what you are looking for, then do a search using ¨find in description¨. If you know the name, you can search by using ¨find in name¨. You can use ¨find in files¨ in case your looking for a specific lib* file ( library ) and do not know what package it comes with.

Also you can have a look at 'all the packages', by group, size, selection state, source repository and update availability.
The feature ¨source repository¨ is the most interesting one.
Remember, it will not have many options nor packages under “by source repository” unless you first add a few different sources. Ones to consider are the “Penguin Liberation Front” (PLF ) and ¨Thacs¨. If you are a Mandrake Club member, then go to your Club preferences page and add a source for ¨contributions¨, ¨club-contributions¨ and ¨commercial applications¨.

When you have a look at the different packages available, you will find a wide variety of offerings, including games, educational tools, scientific tools, word processing, HTML editors, SWF editors, drawing programs, photo editors, sound/music manipulating software. Anything you can think of, you can find them there. If you have some free time, scroll down through all the programs available. Most of them have unusual names, so be sure to read the descriptions too ( for the descriptions you can choose ¨normal¨ or ¨maximum information¨ ).

I sure hope you have a fast connection, because when you are done browsing, you will sure be downloading a lot of them. ( If you have disk 3--the international CD for Mandrake, you will find many of the files here as well as on the other disks. )

Last time I wrote about searching software packages for Mandrake, today we do a general round-up.

Searching for software is relatively easy in Linux because there are a few places that act like huge warehouses where all the packages can be found.

Most important resource is Freshmeat
as they have a search engine on their site that will find you any package you like, be it in tarball, .rpm, or .deb format.

Tarball is universal for all Linux distro´s ( but there is a difference between the .tar.gz format and the .tgz one that is special for Slackware and VectorLinux ) Sourceforge foundries is a good place to look.
Also the ftp sites from the specific distros have plenty of extra packages.

RPM is ¨RedHat Package Management¨ was originally developed for RedHat but today also used for Mandrake and SuSE ( most of the time there is a difference between RPMs for Mandrake or RedHat so see to it that you get the right one ) A special search engine for RPMs is: RPMfind.net

As .deb are Debian specific packages, you get them though apt-get at the Debian mirrors but also on sourceforge and freshmeat.

An enormous resource for all thats related to music and sound is the site Linux-sound.orgyou should really go and have a look there, it´s amazing what you can get from that site. ( no ZZ Top MP3s though, actually no music files at all, but everything to make them. )

If you are looking for a package and the Freshmeat search engine can´t find it because you do not know the name of it . . . try google/linux

If you want to backup your mail, addresses and appointments from Evolution, to import them later in an updated version of your distro, or in Evolution of another distro. All you have to backup is the ¨mail¨ directory you will find in /home/bruno/.evolution.

Later you can either import the files with the import-function or just replace the ¨mail¨ directory.
With the import function you have to browse to the ¨inbox¨ files you will find in /mail/local/inbox for your mail, any subdirectories you made will also be there.

For only importing your addresses, either copy /addressbook or import the addressbook.db that you find in /addressbook/local/addressbook.db. ( I think just copying the ¨addressbook¨ directory is the easy way and in previous versions the import function did not always do what you wanted it to do )

For only importing the tasks/calender you do the same as with the addresses.

Backup /home/bruno/.evolution/mail/pop, /home/bruno/.evolution/mail/config the /home/bruno/.gconf/apps/evolution and the /home/bruno/.gnome2_private/Evolution for the settings of your ISP/pop-mail addresses.

If you make a backup from the ~/.evolution directory to CD on a regular basis, the day that something serious will strike your computer you will just grab the CD and be able to get Evolution back in its old state in a flash.

Bruno

PS: Another handy file to backup: Export your bookmarks to a file in your home directory and put that on the CD as well. ( Edit bookmarks, in the menu-bar --> bookmark --> export and you can choose where to put it, Mozilla exports them in HTML, that makes it easy to import in Galeon, Firebird, Konqueror and of course Mozilla. )

The Mandrake GUI has a nice looking Lilo, that is why I like to use that one to add other distro´s. As an example we will add Slackware ( located on hda5 ) to the Mandrake Lilo. You can add as many distro´s as you like. All commands are given in Mandrake.

First we have to make a few directories, one in /mnt to mount the slack partition on ( temporary ) and one in /boot.

And open a console:

$ su[/size]
< password >
# mkdir /mnt/slack
# mkdir /boot/slack

Then we mount the Slack partition and copy the Slack vmlinuz to the /boot directory of Mandrake ( in this case ¨ vmlinuz-ide-2.4.20¨ while in other cases just vmlinuz, BUT know that the vmlinuz often is just a link to the vmlinuz+number and a copy of the link won't work ). Please have a look before you start what the vmlinuz is called that is in the /boot of the distro that you want to add . ( Also: if there is a initrd.img present, like in other distro's, you need to copy that as well )

If you get an error message it means that you made a typo somewhere . . .go back in with vi and correct the file . . . .
The * means that Mandrake is the default to boot if no action is taken at the lilo screen.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Now, Slack will NOT be automatically mounted if you boot Mandrake . . we mounted it only once . . . if you want it mounted every time we need to adapt /etc/fstab . . . . . but I would leave it like it is and do ¨mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/slack¨ whenever you need to address Slack from Mandrake ( wich will not be very often )

[size=4] Bruno

PS: I know there are may other ways to do this ( even a GUI tool in Mandrake can do the trick ) but was is my favorite way to adapt Lilo.

PS2: For aditional info about adding RedHat 9.0 and if CDRW does not get recognized in Slackware see Here

You probably know already that every 20 to 30 times you reboot your system, or after each un-clean shutdown, you will get a check of the integrity of your file system.

NOTE: this text is only relevant for Ext2 filesystems . . . for Ext3 see "IMPORTANT" at the bottom of this tip.

Also you might have seen on the screen as the system files are checked that you have to hit the Y button within 5 seconds . . . . now, 5 seconds is very short and the chances are you will be just too late . . . the system will continue booting, but if there are problems with the integrity . . . you have a problem . . so most of the time at a file check I had my finger close to the Y button . . not anymore !

I did a few little tweaks:

Open the file "/etc/sysconfig/autofsck" in vi

$ su
< password >
# vi /etc/sysconfig/autofsck

" i " ( to put vi in insert mode )

And you will see two lines:

Quote

AUTOFSCK_TIMEOUT=5

( just change the number of seconds here )
and

Quote

AUTOFSCK_DEF_CHECK=no

(
change the value to yes and it will hit the Y for you)

Save the file Esc ( put vi in command mode )ZZ

If there is no such file as "/etc/sysconfig/autofsck", just make it (They are the same commands to make or open a file in vi)

Mine looks like this:

File, on Drake, said:

# -*- Mode: sh -*-# $Id:$

# Specify here how many seconds we wait for timeoutAUTOFSCK_TIMEOUT=3

# Specify if we do automatic fsck.AUTOFSCK_DEF_CHECK=yes

#Specify how many seconds we wait for mounting crypto.AUTOFSCK_CRYPTO_TIMEOUT=25

The last line is only for if you have a crypto file system installed ( search google/linux if you want to know more about crypto file systems)

IMPORTANT:The text above is only relevant if you use Ext2 filesystem !

cooker, on Oct 31 2003, said:

In case of a hard-reset, init messages indicate the computer was not shut down cleanly, and a message appear :"Press Y within 5 seconds to force the file system check "Actually this is very misleading : if you do it with ext3, it does NOT use the journal and then you will experience system losses. Lots of newbies have reported that problem. Now that would be nice to change this message so that people leave the journalisation do the good work. --Eric

For the install of a Linux distro's we will have to change the BIOS settings.
Most important changes are:
1) The value for "PnP aware OS" has to be set to "NO"
2) And the order the BIOS looks for boot options . . ( the MBR is mostly on IDE 0, we want to boot from CD ) We will have to put the CD-ROM on the first place, the floppy and the IDE 0 in second and third place. After the install we can put the BIOS settings back as they were before.

Some people have some serious problems getting in the BIOS, some computer brands are making it really difficult, so here is an overview of the different options related to the brand PC:
(took the quotes out of several threads in the Linux and Hardware forum )